and if the madness takes you
by The Lady Avaritia
Summary: i want to take me too And he's got the bad habit of falling for the giggly blonde girls who always like another boy before him. Jonathan Crane, Harleen Quinzel and the dead Sherry Squires in a series of drabbles. "You are DEAD inside, Jonathan Crane. And I pity you. You hear me? I PITY YOU!" -angst, gen, drama, romance-
1. Chapter 1

All right. So I recently got introduced to the Joker/Harley/Scarecrow love triangle type-thingy and fell in love with it. This drabble series is my lame contribution. I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP!

_i. i love you very much but_

Sometimes late at night he has nightmares. He dreams about a girl with long porcelain limbs and golden Rapunzel locks, princess locks, a girl who says she is _magical._ He dreams about a girl in a cheerleader uniform, a girl with big blue eyes and soft full lips who says things like:  
_"My name is Sherry Squires and I believe I should be class representative because…_"

Sometimes She sits on the wooden fence that separates Squires and Keeny farm, long lean legs crossed over one another, lollipop dangling from her lips, and her eyes sparkle and She asks him

"_Do you miss me, Jonny-boy?"_

In other dreams She is surrounded by the tall monstrous shadows of muscular football players from the varsity team, who thump steroids as early as age seventeen and think they matter, and they laugh and point and holler "_Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow…_"

He dreams about the cold green waters of the river, and the recumbent bodies of the sycamores and bright red car crushed into a ball of tin, and She walks out of the water in her red, red, red prom dress, long blonde hair like a spider-web veil dripping with water, slender delicate arms with fingers like broken matchsticks and dull dead eyes staring at him, a sickly sweet smile on Her face, like and thick green liquid falls from her eyes like tears and mats her long golden lashes and She laughs, loud dark, slutty, the kind of laugh that grabs attention and makes men turn around in bars, and says "Oh, never mind that, Jonny-boy. I'm merely ROTTING!"

He dreams about a girl with magical, princess locks, and big blue eyes and a cheerleader uniform, he dreams about a girl who used to say things like _"Go, go, Gotham High!"_ and _"I believe I should be class representative because…"_ and _"Jonny-boy Scarecrow."_

After dreams like that he shoots up in his damp cold bed in his empty cramped apartment in the Narrows, blinks myopically in the darkness, rubs his sweaty forehead, pinches the bridge of his nose, then kicks the sheets aside fixes himself a pot of coffee and spends the rest of the night in front of the cracked window-still, observing with his near-sighted eyes, the dreary landscape of the Narrows. Even if he puts his glasses on, the world will still be ugly.

"_Are you happy now, Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow?"_

Bitch.


	2. Chapter 2

ii. _carve a jack-o-lantern, though my heart's not exactly a pumpkin_

When Harleen Quinzel first meets Jonathan Crane, she feels like a giddy schoolgirl with a crush on the hot teacher, because seriously, seriously, seriously… okay. Deep breath. That man is absolutely fucking gorgeous, really!

He's tall and slender and not muscular, and he's more pretty than handsome, just how she likes her men, and he's got those beautiful electric blue eyes framed with thick dark eyelashes, and his hair is silky and dark and she wants to run her fingers though it, feel the texture… and his face is perfect, totally perfect, with his high cheekbones, and straight nose and full kissable lips, and he always wears pristinely ironed dark suits (and yeah, okay, she'll admit it, she's a sucker for pretty boys in suits), and he always carries a briefcase (I mean, how professional is that?) and he has like, such a sweet smile, when he's being polite and greets someone, and he's got impeccable manners, and… okay, okay, okay. She's seriously got to stop now. That guy's her boss.

And damn. He's got a nice ass too, she notes to herself, as she drops her pen accidentally-on-purpose and he bends down to pick it up for her. Seriously? Where do they sell men like that?


	3. Chapter 3

iii._ ghosts of girlfriends past_

When Jonathan Crane first sees Harleen Quinzel, he does a double take, then takes of his glasses, rubs his eyes with his knuckles, cleans his glasses with the dark blue cotton handkerchief in his glasses case, puts them back on, and hopes his smile passes for genuine.

If Harleen was any worse a psychologist, or a tad bit more busy fan-girling (and she was doing a fair share of that in her head) she would've missed the way his glacier-top eyes widened as if he'd just seen a ghost. But then he smiled at her, and so she felt obliged to beam at him, flipped her long blonde hair behind her back, sat across from his desk, crossed one leg over the other professionally and studied him carefully.

"So, Miss Quinzel," he begins and she wants to melt! Gods, that voice! It was absolutely delicious! Like snake slithering on silk, oh, god, that drawl!

Forty minutes from that point she is hired as a psychiatrist in Arkham Asylum.


	4. Chapter 4

iv. _the teenage dead girl_

Jonathan still looks at her like she's a ghost. His eyes, old and weary, rest on her face sometimes, linger on her blonde pig-tails. If she catches him staring he'll sigh, look away and rub his eyes.

"What are you afraid of, Scarecrow?" she whispers in his ear one night, while another generic warehouse is burning and Batman is trashing goons like they're nothing.

"I am not afraid of anything among the living world." He says in a carefully blank voice, then turns around and with unnecessary vigor sprays a cop with fear toxin.

She giggles and pirouettes herself towards the Joker, and his eyes linger on her and his ears ring with her laugh, and she knows he's looking.


	5. Chapter 5

v. _mama always told me_

"I love you, okay? Or maybe I don't. I can't even tell anymore."

He'd like to say that. He imagines himself saying that. And then cuts himself short.

He'd like to say his eyes don't linger. But sometimes, on some nights, her hair falls just so, and her eyes sparkle just like, and the ghost of Sherry Squires that always pulses underneath Harley Quinn is more alive than ever and on these nights his eyes find their way to wherever she is, laughing, and Joker shoots him glares as if to say "Mine!"


	6. Chapter 6

vi. _good advice or something like it (pt. I)_

"Ed," the pretty little jester whines one night. "Ed, I have a problem."

Riddler looks up from his already solved crossword.

"Ed I think I'm in love… And it ain't Mista' J."

He sighs wearily and he says "Oh, Harley." But she continues,

"Can you give me a hypothesis about it based on the current data? Possibly with percentages."

But Riddler just shakes his head and repeats sadly "Oh, Harley."


	7. Chapter 7

vii. _good advice or something like it (pt. II)_

"Guys like him tear up girls like you apart, Harl," Pam says, and Harley's not entirely sure which J her friend is talking about so she stands silent.

"They're bad people, Harl. Not a single redeemable quality, I'd know. And you know too, so don't play dumb."  
"But, Pam," Harley whines.

"Hush now," Pam snaps.

Harley hushes while her friend dabs a cut across her left shoulder-blade with bio-friendly (obviously) antiseptic.


	8. Chapter 8

ix. _my honey lovin' arms_

She's leaning on the ramshackle headboard of the bed in Joker's (one of many) apartment in the Narrows, and Joker's leaning on her shoulder, as she rubs lazy circles over his bandaged shoulder with her fingertips. He is shirtless and his face-devoid of make-up. A purr rumbles low in his chest.

"Hey Harl?"  
"Yeah, Puddin'?"

"Ya know I love ya, right?"  
"Sure I do, Puddin'. I love ya too."

He raises his uninjured arms to cup her face and pull her down for a kiss, that starts sweet and gentle, and ends with the two of them some time later, sweaty and naked sprawled across the sheets, while the ceiling fan goes round and round in lazy mesmerizing circles above them.


	9. Chapter 9

x. _where i can do no harm_

He's the only one who seems to remember that she wasn't born giggling in grease paint. Sometimes she's got a hard time remembering it too, but then he catches her eye, and an understanding passes between them. They were both doctors once.

But then he goes and does something like gasing an entire warehouse of worthless henchies with his toxin, and she goes and does something like shooting a semi-automatic in the middle of a bank while kissing Joker (who's shooting a semi-automatic as well, mind you) on live TV, and they both know that they're even less than strangers to each other, now.


	10. Chapter 10

xi. _and i can do no wrong_

He's got this problem where he falls in love with the giggly blonde ditz who loves another boy before him and it's all too easy to imagine petite slim Harley Quinn in Sherry Squiers' red and black cheerleader uniform with those school-approved school appropriate short shorts, and the thought makes him want to drag his eyeballs through dirty jagged glass.

Instead, he goes to the Stacked Deck and gets drunk with Nashton, like he's never gotten drunk before, until he doesn't remember her name, or his name, or who he is, what he is supposed to be and what she is supposed to have been.

He wakes in the morning with a pounding head and he hates the world, himself and her. In fact, maybe he hates them both – Sherry for being a mean dead girl and Harley for being a live kind one.


	11. Chapter 11

xii_. i'd love you, but you make my eyes bleed_

He can be unreasonably cruel sometimes, nothing to do with the scientific method and everything to do with the fact that he just _can_.

And sometimes he is unreasonably cruel because he just diesn't know any better. Like when she is crying, her Harlequin make-up smeared, and her small shoulders shaking, and he gets the unreasonable urge to comfort her, so he asks her what's wrong, and she sobs and she tells him (to her best ability) about a baby behind a dumpster.

"It was so little, Jon," she cries into his shoulder. "And it was gone, Jon, what kind of monster…"

His mind is drawing up blanks. He can't figure why it would upset Harley. He has a vague idea about women and children, and the mystical connection that all mothers (all women) seem to share, but he can't just…

He voices his confusion. And he is not nearly fast enough afterwards, because she throws herself on him, beats him, scratches him, bites him, hisses at his, spits in his handsome face, crying all the while and calls him inhumane and sociopath and other less kind words that he didn't even know she knew (but she's grown up in the Narrows and she lives with Joker so he should've expected it).

"You are DEAD inside, Jonathan Crane. And I pity you. You hear me? I PITY YOU!"

And she collapses sobbing against his chest.


	12. Chapter 12

_xiii. my girl, she ain't exactly pretty_

"You're gonna kill my girl Harley one day," Joker says conversationally. They're in Arkham again, they've ended up as cell-mates again, and Jon has no idea where this is coming from.

"What do you mean?"  
"What I said. Don't think I haven't seen the way you look at her, I ain't stupid."  
"How do I look at her?" Jon asks, genuinely curious.

"Like she's food. Like she's prey. It's not even sexual, like Riddler. It's like… it's like you want to tear her apart, crawl in her stomach and eat her insides. Splatter her blood all over the place and make her a pretty corpse. And what's worse, Jon, or you know, better… We both know she's gonna let ya. 'Cause she loves us both just this much, enough to die. And I'm no fool. I'm not gonna make my girl die for me. Sure, I may scrape her a little here and there, all in good fun, but there's that. And you want to destroy her. 'n that's all fine 'n dandy. Ya know… that she's so smitten with ya could've been tragic, if it wasn't so darn funny!"

And then the clown bursts into a fit of mindless giggles, tinged with something like hysteria at the edge.

Jon finally knows what Joker is afraid of. He is afraid of losing Harley.


	13. Chapter 13

xiv. _bit not good_

Very rarely, like, once in a blue moon, Riddler would wish he wasn't right about something. But he knows how the story ends. All of the Rogues do. The pretty blonde cheerleader (_jester_) will go left instead of right and choose the handsome boy (_the Scarecrow Crane, Scarecrow Crane, Scarecrow Crane_) instead of the not-pretty (_scarred, ugly_) smart boy (_not, a freak, just ahead of the curve, Joker_) and it's kinda, maybe, sorta sad, and anti-climatic and tragic in that one certain Aristotelian way that people study in high-school.


	14. Chapter 14

xv. _bit less alive_

There's a girl who loves a boy who always hesitates before he says I lo –

She wears short denim shorts cut off from a pair of old jeans and platform sandals to display her rainbow-colored toes, and she always sucks on a lollipop. She's got her blonde princess curls up in pony-tails and there's something about the way she smiles, with her lips more raised towards her left dimple than the right.

Some years later, she wears skin tight leather in red and black and dominatrix boots, and a jester mask, and she smokes cigarettes, and there's something in the way her lips raise more towards the right dimple than the left. She's got the name JACK NAPIER carved into her left hipbone.

Oh. She's also a bit less alive.


	15. Chapter 15

xvi. 99% dead

Harley decides to try Harvey's method. She firgures, if binary opposites work for him, why wouldn't they work for her. Jack and Jon are just two sides of the same coin, which has way too many sides. She has a quarter, which she deliberatel tosses.

Heads-Jon.

Tails-Jack.

Or not…. She twirls it between her fingers.

"Doing it wrong," a gruff voice behind her says. Harvey has walked into the Stacked Deck. He takes the quarter from her and flips it expertly. Then goes through the motions slower.

"Like that," he says, and gives it back. He gives her a small uncertain smile, then walks away. It's still warm in her hand.

He's flipped it to Heads. She puts it deep in her jeans pocket. There's time, she thinks. Maybe it only works right for Harvey, she thinks.

She doesn't touch that quarter again.


	16. Chapter 16

xvii. _i have half a mind to kill you_

"I'm in love with Jon," she blurts out, her blue eyes widen and a hand flies to her mouth as she realizes the impact to her words.

"I'm so sorry Puddin, didn't mean to say that, I love you more – "  
"Okay."  
"Please forgive me… What?"  
"I said okay."

She's never seen him quite to serious, silent and dispassionate. It's almost scary, in a way.

She opens her mouth, closes it. He draws her against his chest.

She starts crying.

"Now, now, beautiful," he wipes her cheeks with his rough calloused thumbs.

"Why so serious? You're a pretty girl in love. Smile a little, eh? That's my Harl."


	17. Chapter 17

xviii._ i believe in harley quinn_

They always wind up alone at the Stacked Deck right before last call – Riddler, mindlessly tirning a Rubic's cube between nible fingers, Jon, drinking silent and alone, while Joker throws darts in the shape of a smiley face at the wall. And Harley, always Harley, pretty and blonde at his side.

She detaches herself from his strong arms, saunters over to the juke-box and shoves the only quarter in her jeans pocket in. She closes her eyes, throws her arms in the air. She dances slowly, off-beat, to music different than the one playing, a image of carelessness and happiness and innocence.

Joker looks her over appreciatively. Jon has a pained grimace on his handsome face. Edward looks detachedly and his mind swirls with percentages.

_Riddle me this_

_Riddle me that_

_Who's gonna break_

_The harlequin's heart?_


	18. Chapter 18

xix. _crash right into my fucking arms_

When she first saw Joker, she thought he was lovely, and that still hasn't changed. He is a beautiful man, a striking man, and the scars will never change that. Sometimes, when they lay side by side in the middle of the night, and he sleeps, head resting on her flat stomach, she will trace the deep lines with her fingertips, feeling the texture.

And sometimes, when she is in his arms, she will turn around, raise on her tippy toes and kiss him on the cheeks.

And sometimes, he will believe her kisses, and smile a genuine smile.


	19. Chapter 19

xx. _the girl who waited_

Harley was especially pretty that night, in cut off denim shorts, with rainbow toes and pink flip-flops and hair up in pig-tails and a lollipop between her soft lips, and she was giggling and spinning round and round, her hands outstretched, insane and slutty and absolutely fucking marvelous, her small hands still dripping with the blood of the man whose eyes she'd just torn out.

Her laugh rings in Jon's ears as he leans on a tree and watches her.

"Come on, Scarecrow!" she yells, laughing and clapping her hands, "Come catch me!"

That night she was more insane than ever.

"I kind of love you! So come and catch me!" she repeats, laughing and spinning, cruel girl. The parallels running in his mind are blurred as he pushes himself off the tree.

"Scarecrow Crane, Scarecrow Crane! Pathetic, you are, girls like me don't like guys like you, Scarecrow Crane!"  
"Come catch me if you can Jon!"

And the damned giggling again.

And then she is on the ground, struggling against his slender frame as he pins her down, knees on either side of her ribcage.

"Gotcha," he whispers, and his spidery hands trace her throat. She giggles p at him dazedly. She's lost her lollipop.

"Are you happy now, Jonathan Crane the Scarecrow?"

But his grip on her small thin neck tightens and she is no longer struggling, and her blue eyes dull, and her lips go tinged blue, and then she stops breathing all together, and he cheks for the pulse this time, cause he won't take it if she comes back to haunt him again.

"Well," a voice behind him demands, "are you happy now, Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow?" Joker asks as he walks down the hill, cigarette dangling from his lips, and he nudges Harley's warm small body with his foot.

Bitch.


	20. Chapter 20

viii. _she was slightly_

"Let me start by saying that I don't love you, not even a little."

She sits perched on the wooden fence that separates Keeny farm from the Squires property.

It's just them and the scarecrow. She's wearing denim shorts and her platform sandals make her bronze legs look miles long.

"Oh? Why are you here then?"

"Because I don't even like you. Lollipop?"

She hands the cavity-stick to him, smiles, showing pearly white teeth. Her white shirt is tied under her breasts, to display her flat stomach. The thin cotton is see-through. She's not wearing a bra.

"I've seen the way you look at me. At school." She tells him.

"How?"  
"Like you want me. So don't."

"Why?"  
"You're a gorgeous guy, Scarecrow Crane, don't get me wrong. But I know your type. I've seen your type. Hell, my father is your type. Was, 'fore he ran out on us. So don't even think about it."  
"What is my type?"  
"Bad people. Not one redeemable quality. Hey, I ain't as smart as ya. But I ain't stupid either. I know trouble when I see it. So stay away from me. You can keep the lollipop."

She hops off and runs towards he home, not out of fear, but for the sake of running, of feeling wind in her long blonde tresses. She makes a couple of pirouettes.

He imagines strangling her.


End file.
